Description:
How The Book of Common Prayer became one of the most influential works in the English language
While many of us are familiar with such famous words as "Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here. . ." or "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust," we may not know that they originated in The Book of Common Prayer, which first appeared in 1549. Like the words of the King James Bible and Shakespeare, the language of this prayer book has saturated English culture and letters. Here Alan Jacobs tells its story. He shows how The Book of Common Prayer--from its beginnings as a means of social and political control in the England of Henry VIII to its worldwide presence today--became a venerable work whose cadences express the heart of religious life for millions.Brief description: Alan Jacobs is Distinguished Professor of the Humanities in the Honors Program at Baylor University. He is the author of several books, including The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction (Oxford) and Original Sin: A Cultural History (HarperOne), and he has edited W. H. Auden's long poems For the Time Being and The Age of Anxiety (both Princeton).
Review Quotes: "One could not wish for a more engaging introduction to the history of the Prayer Book. . . . [A] triumph of compression and lucidity."--David Martin, Church Times